Elder McRae held her tight, which was good. After twelve days in the cargo container with no gravity, now she was walking on her own feet but still she felt like she would float away, be caught by a gust of wind or the random energy of the crowds and be carried along, swept off to some incredible new spectacle.
Her head throbbed with pain, like a ring of iron had been clamped around her temples. It was the noise. The noise! Voices sounded from every corner, asking for things, promising things, whispering snatches of overheard conversations she couldn’t ever follow. Voices thick with accents until she couldn’t understand their words. Voices uttering oaths and curses and absurd promises. Voices using obscenities that shocked her. Voices thick with culture and sophistication, dripping with sarcasm and feigned surprise.
The smells—the smells of food and perfume that came wafting from every building, the smells of sweat and people, the smells of metal and burning fuel and chemicals that wafted off the train as it hurried off to its next stop. Smells she’d never encountered before, smells she couldn’t name.
There was so much she couldn’t follow, so much she couldn’t understand. They passed by a shop with lights in its windows, lights illuminating a dress made of interwoven gauze strips. Roan could never see anyone on Niraya wearing something like that—even if they could afford it. But it was so beautiful. Who was that dress made for? Before she could even get a good look at it Elder McRae dragged her onward.
Past a little pond, perfectly hexagonal in shape but with flowers growing on its mossy banks. A group of Navy people stood on the far side, squatting down and jeering at some frogs that leapt from hiding. One of them drew a pistol and fired a bullet into the still, dark water, right next to a frog, making it jump to the left. The others laughed and cheered, and exchanged sheaves of money.
Roan gasped in bewilderment but they were already moving on. Past, this time, a wide yard full of little paper houses, rice paper stretched over wooden frames, just big enough to sit inside. At the center of the yard lay a pile of what looked like emaciated mannequins. A man in a vest and a round hat took money from a man in a jumpsuit, then handed him one of the mannequins. The man in the jumpsuit carried it toward one of the little houses, and even as he stepped inside Roan saw the mannequin plump out, its hips widening, breasts budding from its chest.
The elder said something admonitory Roan barely heard. She looked away and followed as the elder pulled her along another little road. They had directions, Roan knew, a map of where to go, but she couldn’t imagine how the elder could follow it, not in this chaos, this wild place.
They headed up an incline toward a platform built out over the crowds. Roan looked up and saw countless other platforms above them, stretching up into the air. Which earned her a whole new shock. If she looked all the way up, as far as she could see, past clouds of drones and drifting miniblimps—up farther, past banks of lights and speakers and ventilation fans—all the way up there was a whole other world, more streets, more lights, hanging upside down. She knew they were inside a rotating cylinder, she knew about centrifugal force, but still it was hard to believe that all the people up there weren’t about to fall on her. She fought down the urge to cover her head.
So much. Way, way too much.
A thrumming twang sounded right next to her and she jumped, but it was just a man pushing a cart full of flavored ices, hawking his wares by striking a tuning fork and holding it over his head. She found it hard to look away, as if the eerie sound had pinned her to the spot.
But then the elder stopped walking and Roan came up short. She looked around, feeling very dizzy, and saw they’d reached their destination. A restaurant up on its own platform, at the top of a wide flight of steel stairs. Dark wood and hooded lanterns, everything painted in elegant floral designs. The waiters wore black vests and carried towels over their arms as they carried platters of steaming food to the well-dressed diners. Over the top of the stairs curved a wrought-iron arch inscribed THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER in flowing, ornate script.
A man with a little mustache and a blue monocle screwed into one of his eye sockets peered down at them over a thick paper book. “I’m afraid we’re only seating those with reservations at the moment,” he told the elder. Roan had no idea what that meant, but she understood his questioning, sneering look.
“We’re here to see Auster Maggs,” the elder said.
Instantly the man’s demeanor changed. He bowed deeply and held out one arm, gesturing for them to step inside. “Of course. You’re expected.”
“This time,” the elder said, leaning close, “let me do the talking, all right?”
Roan just shook her head, unable to think, much less speak.
So this—this was civilization.
It was nothing like what she’d imagined.
Chapter Four
When Valk arrived at Vairside’s docks, the FA.2 had just set down, the air around its retros still shimmering with heat. The canopy lifted away from the cockpit and revealed the man inside. He wore a heavy suit much like Valk’s own but painted with battle flags down the sleeves and legs. Reaching up to his throat the pilot touched a recessed key and his helmet rippled and then dissolved away, melting into vents in the hard collar of the suit.
Old, Valk thought. He looks old. He had the dark skin of a man who had spent far too much time absorbing unfiltered ultraviolet in deep space. The heavy, creased wrinkles of someone born before elastomer inoculations were invented.
His eyes were as sharp as broken glass, though, and Valk felt like their stare bored right through his polarized helmet.
Valk already knew who this man was. He’d done his homework. He pinged the pilot’s cryptab anyway, a little dull square on the chest of his suit that was the pilot’s only official insignia. The cryptab contained his service record and personal information. All his military commendations were in there, including his Blue Star, and Valk knew what that meant—the pilot was an ace, with more than five confirmed kills to his name. Valk used to have a Blue Star himself, until they took it away. The cryptab confirmed the pilot’s name, too.
Aleister Lanoe. The most decorated fighter pilot of all time.
Valk knew the name, and the legend, long before Lanoe came to the Hexus. The man’s life story read like a text from a history class. In every major war of the last three centuries, Aleister Lanoe had been there, in the cockpit of a fighter—and always on the winning side.
Lanoe had been born on Earth, back when humanity only had one star to call its own. He’d enlisted at the start of the Century War, when Mars and Ganymede had challenged Earth for ownership of the solar system. He’d risen to distinction in the middle of that bloody slog, through endless battles that cost the lives of half the human race. Lanoe had survived—and, eventually, prevailed. He’d been a hero then, an ace of aces. He could have rested on his laurels, perhaps. Instead he’d joined back up when Mars tried to start things again in the Short Revolt, twenty years later. Lanoe had been right there on the front lines when Mars finally gave in and accepted its status as a protectorate of Earth.
By then the first wormholes were open, and new planets around distant stars were being settled. Dozens of new systems were opened up all at once, planets discovered and terraformed and colonized in the space of only a few decades. That had been a wild time (or so Valk had heard—he wouldn’t be born for another seventy-five years), an era of warlords seizing entire sectors and battles erupting in space light-years away from any front. A time so chaotic that later historians simply called it the Brushfire. Earth—and Lanoe—had fought on the side of the polys, because at the time the big interplanetary corporations were the only powers capable of bringing peace to human space.
At least, that had been the company line. Not everybody accepted it, even when the polys were victorious, even when they set up the institutions and infrastructure that made human space a possibility, made the galaxy safe for commerce again. There had been those who didn’t want to live under the thum
b of the big companies. People who wanted to live free, to set up their own planetary colonies without being forever beholden to the polys.
Unfortunately their best idea of how to get that desire across was to blow up poly facilities and murder the plutocrats in their beds. The Establishment, as they called themselves, had been branded as terrorists. The Navy, including Aleister Lanoe, had been sent to root them out and destroy them. They’d been successful at capturing or killing the freedom fighters—Lanoe had won that war, too—but their victory was short-lived. A new, more organized Establishment had risen from the ashes. Instead of relying on sneak attacks and assassinations, the new Establishmentarians had mustered fleets of warships and divisions of marines. They’d seized the planet Sheol and raised their blue flag there, swearing to defend it and their right to live free.
That had been where Valk came in—he’d flown under the blue banner, on the side of self-determination. He’d been an Establishmentarian, himself.
He should have known better. It wasn’t long before Aleister Lanoe and the Navy rolled in, guns blazing, to take Sheol back. The Establishment had fought like wild dogs, pushed back into a corner and with nowhere to go. They’d sacrificed thousands of lives to keep the dream going. Valk had risen to minor celebrity himself, one of the Establishment’s top aces, and he’d been willing to fight to the death. But Lanoe and the polys had seemingly infinite resources behind them. Always they had more ships, more people, more money than the Establishment. It had really only been a matter of time—the grand cause had been so thoroughly doomed that the history texts didn’t even call the fighting a full-fledged war. They just called it a crisis, the Establishment Crisis, as if it were destined to be no more than a footnote in the record books.
That been the last of Lanoe’s wars. Humans still fought each other, of course. The polys, having achieved dominance over every human planet except Earth, had turned on each other, battling one another for supremacy. Even now Centrocor was fighting against DaoLink, and ThiessGruppe had attacked Tuonela, a planet run by Wilscon. There would always be more wars. Lanoe had resigned his commission at the end of the Crisis, though. Maybe he figured it was time to let somebody else have the glory. In the seventeen years since then, he’d lost some of his fame. His name was no longer a household word. Yet no one could take away what he’d achieved.
Lanoe’s career had spanned centuries. He’d fought in hundreds of battles and won almost all of them. The man was a legend, a hero out of myth, and he hadn’t got that way by being stupid.
And now Valk had to try to outsmart him.
There was no gravity in the docking facility. Lanoe kicked out of his seat and grabbed the edge of the raised canopy so he could face Valk directly. “I was told to set down here by the order of orbital traffic control. I assume that was you? The same man I spoke to when I arrived in this system?”
“Yeah,” Valk said. He pushed himself over to the fighter, grabbed one of its airfoils to steady himself. “That’s right. I wanted to see you for myself.” He looked over the FA.2, the cigar-shaped body with its segmented canopy, the double row of airfoils, the bulky weapon pods. It had been a while, but he felt the old stirring, the need to fly. “I’d ask where the yacht got to, but I’ve had way too many people tell me to mind my business today, already.”
Lanoe didn’t nod. Didn’t blink, either. Cold damned fish, Valk thought.
Valk put a hand on his chest. “I’m Tannis—”
“I know who you are,” Lanoe replied. “I looked up your service record after we spoke. I have to admit I was a little surprised to find you here. Tannis Valk, the Blue Devil.”
“They don’t call me that anymore,” Valk insisted.
“Had you in my sights once. Dogfight back in the Establishment Crisis.”
“That’s right. It took every trick I knew but I shook you off my tail,” Valk replied.
That day, when the two of them squared off, Lanoe had tried to straight-up murder Valk. The fact he hadn’t succeeded had come down to pure honest luck. Valk had been flying a fresh ship with plenty of fuel, while Lanoe had been at the end of a long patrol, running on fumes.
It was the only reason Valk was still alive.
Lanoe jumped down from his cockpit and strode over to get right in Valk’s face. “We were sworn enemies, back then.” He shot out a hand. “Damned good thing that stupid war is over and we don’t have to try to kill each other anymore, huh?”
Valk grabbed the hand and shook it. There was no way for the pilot to see it, but inside his helmet he wore a goofy grin.
“How about I buy you a drink?” Valk asked.
The pilot’s hard eyes twinkled. “It’s the least you can do after refusing to let me shoot you down.”
Maggs took his time in the washroom.
Before the gilt mirror he slicked his hair back one last time. Took a bit of razor paper to the stubble on his Adam’s apple. Adjusted the ceremonial dirk in its scabbard at his hip.
He wore a thinsuit, a dress uniform. By regs his only insignia was the gray cryptab on his chest. Since his guests weren’t Navy they wouldn’t be able to access the data it held, so they couldn’t see his Blue Star or any of his commendations. There were other ways to indicate one’s station, however. He had polished all the fittings of the suit, burnished the laurel leaves that wrapped around his collar ring. He fussed with the Velcro patch on his shoulder, hanging his gloves there just so, until the fingers hung down like the braid of an epaulet.
He put as much care into his appearance as if he were going to inspection at the Admiralty. One had to look the part.
The washroom door cracked open and a pinched little face peered inside. Maggs vaguely recognized one of the restaurant’s waiters. “Your guests have arrived, sir. Thought you’d like to know.”
“I’ll be with them presently,” Maggs said, not even looking at the fellow. He made one last swipe at a speck of dust on his sleeve, then stepped out of the washroom and out onto the restaurant’s back patio.
Then he saw the Nirayans, and knew his whole effect would be lost on them. They looked like refugees from a war zone, more than anything. The girl was pretty, he supposed, though in that natural, graceless sort of way of the very young. The old woman looked like a gnarled tree that someone had draped clothes over.
Never mind. He would be gracious, as always. There was such a thing as decorum.
He favored them with a wide, warm smile, and outstretched arms. They did not get up from their seats. Ignoring the slight—most likely they’d never had to learn table manners—he pulled out a chair for himself and dropped artfully into it, one arm slung over its back.
“Shall I order?” he asked, picking up a tasseled menu.
They looked flummoxed. “You’re Lieutenant Maggs?” the old one asked.
He tapped his chest with two fingers. “In the flesh. You must be Elder McRae. And this, of course, is young Roan, your assistant.”
“She’s an aspirant,” the old woman corrected.
“I suppose we all aspire to something,” Maggs said, and laughed a bit, just to break the ice. It didn’t work. If anything they looked more confused than ever. He bent over the menu, careful not to let his eyes roll. It hadn’t been much of a witticism but at least he was trying. “The fish here is very good. Is that all right? And whiskey for the table, since there’s business to be done.”
“I’m afraid I don’t take spirits,” the old woman said.
Maggs waved a hand in apology. “Of course, how thoughtless of me. A prohibition of your faith, I imagine.”
“No,” the old woman replied. “I have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. Lieutenant—our business is rather pressing, and we came a very long way to speak with you.”
“Sorry about that. In my position I have to move about quite a bit. It was just good luck I was at Geryon this week.” He leaned forward a bit, to try to add a whiff of conspiracy. “I’m responsible for more worlds than just Niraya, you see.”
&nbs
p; “Of course. But given your busy schedule, then—can’t the meal wait?”
“Our ways must seem strange to you,” Maggs said. “But it’s tradition among us to never discuss money on an empty stomach. Besides. After so many days of those dreadful meals they serve on starliners these days, surely you could both use a little fresh food.” He glanced across the table at the girl aspirant and gave her a wink.
Her eyes went wide.
Still got it, Maggsy, he told himself. Funny how his internal monologue always sounded like his father’s voice these days.
“We’ll be down to brass tacks soon enough.” He reached for the menu. “That’s an old idiom that means—”
“I know it. I wasn’t born on Niraya,” the old woman told him.
He smiled at her. It was always important at times like this to smile. You could never let them see what you really thought. “I understand your anxiety. And I can assure you, Elder, you’ve come to exactly the right place.”
It hurt his cheeks, but he never let the smile fade.
Valk took Lanoe through the spin lock to Vairside. “I know a little place in here,” he said. “Nothing fancy. But they know to serve my whiskey with a straw.”
Lanoe seemed confused for a moment but then he nodded. “You never take that helmet down,” he said. “I can guess why. But you really care that much what other people think?”
As Valk headed through the broad arch he laughed. “It’s not for my benefit. Come on, let’s catch that train.” They boarded in the rear compartment, which was reserved for Navy personnel only. The Hexus was technically a civilian station, built by Centrocor to serve its development concerns. A few years back, though, Centrocor declared war on another poly called DaoLink. Earth had sent the Navy in to fight on Centrocor’s side and now the Hexus was as much a military base as anything else. Half the Navy came through at one time or another—either on shore leave, or on their way to their next deployment. Valk got a couple of stares as he boarded for the hexagonal logo painted on his shoulder plate, but nobody said anything, especially when they saw he was with Lanoe. Valk could tell when the other passengers had pinged Lanoe’s cryptab because of how hastily they glanced away.
Forsaken Skies Page 4
